Sunday Samples 48
Well, I’m sure everybody knows what tomorrow is. Today, I’ll go with a selection that most everybody has already heard. And if you haven’t, you should have.
A Charlie Brown Christmas was a cartoon unlike any other up to its time. For instance, instead of hiring adults to pretend to be kids, they hired kids to do the voices. Of course, some were too young to read, so they were recorded line-by-line and spliced together in editing. This resulted in a very characteristic, choppy sound to the dialogue, which has become one of the show’s endearing points.
Another departure with the norms of the time was hiring the Vince Guaraldi Trio to compose and play the original jazz selections which comprised the majority of the background music, including “Linus and Lucy”, the song most people think of as the Peanuts theme song. One of the few vocal pieces on the soundtrack is “Christmas Time is Here”. It’s interesting because despite the lyrics the melody hits this bittersweet, ambivalent note in the middle of all the joy of the season. It’s meant to dovetail with Charlie Brown’s dissatisfaction, but I think it stands well enough on its own.
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